


“Raccoons Have a Way of Making Things Easier” and Other Things He Told Him

by misusedElipses



Category: Unaffiliated
Genre: Help, How Do I Tag, I Abuse My Love/Hate Feelings For Raccoons, I Will Not Apologize For The Raccoons, I really hope you like this, I'm Bad At Everything, I'm Bad At Summaries, I'm Bad At Tagging, I'm Sorry, M/M, My First AO3 Post, Original Fiction, Overuse of Raccoons, The Fandom Is Life, The Summery Is Misleading, This is Not A Part Of Any Fandom, but not really, just me, raccoons - Freeform, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 17:23:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10541076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misusedElipses/pseuds/misusedElipses
Summary: A story of a boy who loved and the boy he loved.





	

When everything goes to shit, at least know that it will never be as bad as what happened to Joseph on the second-to-last day of summer last year out behind the Arby’s. Joseph swears back and front that it was all the raccoon’s fault, but Maisy was there and she said that Joseph was just being an idiot. Milo believes Maisy, she wears glasses. “Always believe a chick in glasses. They always know their shit.” That’s what Joseph always told him, at least. 

Joseph told Milo a lot of things, over the years. Last December, he told him to never trust people who eat ice cream in the winter. Milo can no longer trust his older sister. He doesn’t know if Mr. Gormalli eats ice cream in winter, but he still doesn’t trust him. His name is pretentious and, though he wears glasses, he’s not a girl. Mr. Gormalli lets out a heavy sigh for the fifth time in three minutes. Milo has been counting. “Mr. Reed, can you please tell me why you did this?” He’s also been counting the times Mr. Gormalli has asked this. He’s reached three times now. Joseph used to count things, too. 

“I told you. I didn’t do it.” He did do it, but Mr. Gormalli doesn’t need to know that. He didn’t have a raccoon to blame like Joseph did, so he told Mr. Gormalli that it was an alien. Raccoons and aliens are similar enough, right? Joseph liked his alien drawings in elementary school, that’s how they became friends. Milo thinks of how proud Joseph would have been for what he did and how he was going to get away with it. He’d probably laugh at how stupid Mr. Gormalli was for believing in aliens. Milo loved it when Joseph laughed.  


Through the window, Milo could see a car parking crooked between white lines. Familiar stiletto heels click with deafening finality on black asphalt in time with supple sways of succulent hips. Milo thinks he can hear it even through the glass. Today, the clacks of heels seem even more quick and staccato than usual. He sees a scowl twisting her pretty face and the twitch of her red lips as she lets angry mutterings slip past her tongue before his limited view through the window passes, the balding landscape of Mr. Gormalli’s head ensuring he had less time to process the appearance of the woman at his school than he would have liked. Milo begins to rethink his earlier bravado. 

It’s not long before he hears the slam of a door, followed by the startled yelp of the secretary. “Where is he?” It sounds like a snarl and Milo can imagine her perfect teeth bared and ready to bite. Milo thinks she could be handling this better. She shouldn’t let out her anger on the secretary, she should keep it for the one who really deserves it. No, scratch that. She’s handling this just fine. She should continue to let out steam on other people so the one who the anger is really aimed at can get off easy. Milo thinks that’s a better option. The door just behind him is thrown open with absolutely more force than necessary and her scowling eyes immediately zero in on her prey. Milo has the presence of mind to look terrified. 

“Ah! Miss Reed, I presume? Glad you could make it.” Mr. Gormalli attempts a smile but Milo thinks it looks more like a grimace. It looks similar to the one currently morphing into place on Milo’s face. Milo is still terrified, not daring to let his eyes stay on the woman seething in the doorway for too long, but he tries to tone his fear down. Joseph was never afraid of anything, let alone Milo’s sister. “Please, take a seat.” She does and finally shifts her eyes to the balding man behind the worn wooden desk. Milo allows himself to breathe. His sister being here makes him think that maybe he didn’t actually get away with it. He thinks that now would be a good time for aliens be real. 

If aliens were real, would they take him away? Joseph always said that aliens were fake, made up by people with a little too many drugs in their system. Would Mr. Gormalli believe in Milo’s story? Milo didn’t eat ice cream in winter, but he also didn’t wear glasses and, last he checked, he was very much not a girl. There was absolutely no reason for Mr. Gormalli to believe him, whether or not he believed in aliens. Milo chastises himself for his recklessness; Joseph would have been able to think of a better story. Raccoons are always a better way to go than aliens. At least raccoons were arguably real. Milo still believes what Joseph said about aliens, about them being a figment of twisted imaginings of high minds. Joseph would probably tell him he was stupid for going with aliens, no one would ever believe that aliens did it. Maybe he should have gone with ghosts. Milo fiddles with the paper in his jacket pocket, trying to ease his mind, running his fingers over the graphite words he had long since memorized. Joseph’s words. The words that brought him here. 

“…three-day suspension.” Milo’s hand stills and his focus returns to the voices in the room. “Right. Thank you, Mr. Gormalli. I am so sorry for Milo’s behavior; I will be sure to make sure that it never happens again.” This statement is punctuated by an icy glare in Milo’s direction. Milo sends a silent prayer of apology to Joseph for he is weak and terror fills him yet again.  


Milo always hated driving in cars. His sister did not do much to help him with this. It didn’t help that she was angry, spewing out an endless string of words and profanities. Her creative cursing took half her concentration and the car swerved more times than usual. Milo watched out his window as buildings and telephone lines came up slow then zipped by. Life was kind of like that too, at least the good parts. They come slowly, but before you can fully appreciate them, they zip behind you. All you can do is turn your head back and remember. The bad parts of life will sneak up behind you, scare the bejesus out of you then disappear before you blink, cackling all the way. Milo can’t decide if he’d consider today a good part or a bad part. He doesn’t care what Mr. Gormalli or his sister or the other kids in his class say about what he did. He’d do it again because he did it for Joseph. Milo would do anything for Joseph. He gave up the last pizza in the cafeteria line because Joseph asked him to. He threw snowballs at the people passing under the bridge because Joseph asked him to. He touched the raccoon flattened on the side of the road because Joseph asked him to. He destroyed the state award from years and years ago from the school trophy case because Joseph asked him to. Joseph had asked him to with his words. They were in his pocket now. “Please.” Joseph had asked him to, Joseph had said please. Suspension was a small price to pay if it was for Joseph.

The steady stream of cursing Milo’s sister was getting off on Milo’s ears cuts off as the car pulls carelessly onto the pavement in front of the large brick house. Milo’s sister wouldn’t want to bother the neighbors with her profanities. Milo doesn’t say anything to his sister as she slams the car door closed, then the front door to their house, or even after she slams the fridge door after snatching the bottle of whiskey she always keeps in the back and chugging half of it. The tirade continues, but Milo doesn’t rise to any of the bait his sister is placing blatantly before him. Milo doesn’t like fighting with his sister, especially when she has alcohol playing puppeteer with her hands. She has long fingernails. Milo doesn’t. Joseph got into a lot of fights, he always seemed to have a bruise or two. Of course, Milo had never actually seen Joseph get into a fight except for that one time he wrestled Carlos for eating his last fry. It was an intense battle. There was ketchup in Joseph’s hair for days afterward. The first time Milo had ever punched someone had been for Joseph. He had broken his hand and he looked like a raccoon afterward, twin shiners on either eye.  


Dinner was a cherished reprieve from the onslaught of accusations from his sister, her mouth being occupied with her shitty fettuccine. Milo ate with a fervor of someone who hadn’t eaten for days, despite his sister’s culinary ineptitude. It was how Joseph always ate. “Eat all you can now, cause you never know the next time you will.” Milo notes that raccoons act in a similar way, always stealing food whenever they can. That is what makes them such good scapegoats. That, and they look like plotting thieves. Thieves, the lot of them. You can never trust a raccoon, with their tiny little hands. They’re not good for anything but blaming your problems on. 

Milo finishes his slimy plate of mushy Italian cuisine faster than his sister and scurries away before she can open her verbal floodgates again. And before it can escalate to anything else. The bottle had remained next to her plate all through dinner, the contents slowly being sipped away between too-perfect lips. He procrastinates his time under the spray of the shower, the water running cold. He finally twists the water off and shivers his way into clothes after he hears the slam of his sister’s bedroom a few doors down. He makes sure to replace Joseph’s words from his jacket pocket to the pocket of his pajama pants.

The window reflects the darkening night sky as Milo watches from his bed. The branches of the tree just outside his window give a mock knock with the wind. Milo loved the times Joseph would show up knocking at his second story window unexpectedly and make the night an adventure. They’d watch movies and not sleep a wink. Milo couldn’t sleep now either. He kept thinking. Joseph said that if you thought thoughts for too long, eventually the thoughts thought for you. Milo never understood that, until now. His thoughts seemed to be like the bullies from school, shaking his brain for loose change in a back alley. They kept circling back in his head space, demanding things he no longer had. He’d been thinking for a week now. A week is a long time for torment, Milo thinks. A long time without Joseph. He thinks that everything had finally gone to shit and back again. He thinks that what happened a week ago is worse than what happened to Joseph on the second-to-last day of summer last year out behind the Arby’s. And there are no raccoons in sight to blame, not in his little cubicle of a bedroom and most definitely not in his creaky bed, that’s for sure. He thinks that maybe he should do something about it. 

Milo gets up from his bed, a creak from the springs echoing inside the room but not his head. His head is finally quiet. No more ill-tempered thoughts running amuck between his synapses. The clarity is blessed. He shuffles quietly through the house, passing his sister snoring in her room. Even her snores sound angry at him. The house is cast in the light of the solitary moon, the lights of the city hiding the stars away. He passes the empty room with a single dusty bed inside. The snores that used to resonate from inside just whispers of the past. Reaching the final door in the hallway, he twists the cold metal open. He quickly finds what he needs. He writes words like Joseph did. They’re not as good, Joseph always had a way with words, but Milo does his best. He places his words alongside Joseph’s on the counter next to the sink, then allows his eyes to trace the shape of plastic in his hand.  


Admittedly, Milo is afraid. He wonders if maybe Joseph was also afraid. Just this once. But Joseph was always brave and he was able to do it, so why couldn’t Milo? Milo could be just as brave as Joseph. He opens the little plastic bottle, orange like a sunset. Milo remembered the time they sat at the top of the old tree in the field as the sun peaked over the horizon. Yawning its rays over Milo’s memory. He remembered seeing Joseph smile, his skin shining golden. He remembered smiling too. He wasn’t smiling now. He hadn’t since he last saw Joseph.  


Milo thinks it’s about time to see Joseph again.


End file.
